Here is what we have been up to in Year 4 this week.

English

In English this week we have continued reading our book called ‘Tales of Wisdom and Wonder’. We have read two new short stories called ‘Monkey and Papa God’ and ‘The Blind Man and the Hunter’. We have learnt to design stage scenery and used a laptop to use presentational effects of a play script such as italics, underlining and bold lettering. When we had completed learning all the skills needed to write a play script, we were ready to plan and write our ‘showpiece’. This is our end of unit writing piece where we try to show off all the skills we have learnt in the unit. For our ‘showpiece’ we turned Jack and the Beanstalk into a play script. The children did brilliantly with this – well done Year 4!

Next week we will be moving on to describing the setting of ‘The Hunter and the Blind Man’ and using expanded noun phrases with ambitious adjectives, and verbs and adverbs to describe the jungle where this story is set.

Maths

This week in maths, we have been learning to add and subtract decimal numbers using the written column method. Here are some examples of some of the types of questions we have been tackling:

    

Next week in maths we will be multiplying two digit numbers by 2 digit numbers (e.g 32 x 26). We will start by recapping the expanded grid method that we learnt in Term 1 and then we will move on to the column method (long multiplication) for the children that are ready for this method.

Thematic

In our themed learning this week, ‘Water World’, we have been learning about renewable energy sources and how water can be used to create energy – this is called hydroelectric energy. We have focused on the River Thames and found out about a hydroelectric plant on the Thames called Reading Hydro. We have also found out how the River Thames has impacted surrounding settlements, economy and trade. Key words we have learnt are agriculture, hamlet, town, city and human geography. The children have learnt about why people want to live near a river.

Here we are presenting the information that we learnt about hydroelectric power and Reading Hydro to the class...

Next week is science and we will be learning about the 3 states of matter – solids, liquids and gases.

Home Learning

This week’s task is a thematic based one. We will be learning about The Water Cycle. We would like you to find out about this and show what you have learnt in some way. This could be a labelled diagram, a poster, a painting with labels, a paragraph of writing explaining what happens in the water cycle, a PowerPoint presentation, a 3D model of the water cycle or any other way you would like to present what you find out.

You have 2 weeks to complete this task so please could this home learning challenge be handed in by Wednesday 8^th May.

Spellings

Words to practice for a spelling test on Thursday 2^nd May: interact, intercity, international, intercept, interconnected, intermission, interaction, interlink, interview, interface

Challenge words for the test (optional to learn): intertwine, interrelated

Dates to remember  

• 21st May - Year 3 and 4 Viking Games at Upton Junior School

• 23rd May - Year 4 trip to Marlowe Theatre

• 24th May - Dress to Express day and Be here, be you, belong parade at 2.15 on school field

• 24th May - Last day of term

We hope you have a lovely weekend,

The Year 4 Team